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(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

We had a bunch of friends and neighbors over last night to celebrate what seems to be an overflowing group of March birthdays (including one of my sons, whose birthday is today). We had food, drink and lots of conversations.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I’ve been know to lift lines, to steal words from other people’s blog posts and write poems as comments, and leave the poem as a gift from a reader. I admit it. I am thief.

That’s what I was doing yesterday morning – lifting lines. I do it as an act of close reading, of paying attention, of remix. I do it to honor the writers, whom I hope won’t be offended when I wrangle a thought and remove it from context, in order to spin something new from their writing. I do it, for myself, to write.

Yesterday’s line-lifted poems have now become today’s Slice. I hope you follow the links back to the original posts. Thank you to all the Slice of Life bloggers who didn’t know they were giving me paths to poems. Your thoughts became inadvertent inspiration for me as I rambled around the Slice of Life sharing.

(Note: see below for a podcast reading of the poems. The audio is part of an exploration of voice with another adventure altogether known as Networked Narratives.)

Slices aren’t always eaten,
they are nibbled,
chewed, discussed,
enjoyed, often with a side
of surprise, joy, and possibly
sadness and surely, compassion.
We train our microscope towards
a single small moment
in hopes it transforms into
a telescope of the larger human experience.
Go on, then.
Nibble away.

You act out the poem,
as if you were dancing
inside the lines, as if
the iambic pentameter
was a rhythmic beat
for your feet, as if
the seats in the hall were all full
with an audience, instead
of just me, as I read, to you,
with your eyes closed,
watching the ghosts
of the past come alive
on the stage, too.

She dug in her heels,
carved indentations in the dirt,
hands clenched on the rodeo rope
and no room for give,
while on the other side of the arena,
me, the bull, refused to be slack,
my horns pointed upward in exasperation
as she danced around me,
the crowd, holding its applause,
wondering how the standoff might end.

The real work lies in the weeks,
months and
years ahead;
It won’t be enough to stand
and watch,
to complain
and shout.
Armchair pundits can’t call the shots
on Monday morning.
Change happens between neighbors:
handshakes and discussions
on porches, shopping lines and
at mailboxes.
Change, happens, but slowly.

This slack-jawed teen,
stretched out with his headphones
and eyes closed,
ponders the world from above,
strapped into his seat, secure and safe,
never knowing that, for now,
the earth is forever in motion,
and not just spinning for him,
for gravity will yet pull him closer to us,
eventually, perhaps not without a fight,
even as his soundtrack plays to the audience
of one.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

This is one of those deja vu posts — every year in March, our neighborhood gathers for a Winter Blues pizza party/ Yankee Raffle event as a way to reconnect as Spring arrives.

Last night, more then 150 people came out for the event, and it was nice to see everyone again. We even helped an elderly neighbor, who has trouble walking, to the event, as a way to connect even the housebound to the community during the waning days of Winter. She was very grateful. I’ve written about the event most Marches for Slices of Life over the past ten years.

One of the items in the raffle immediately caught my eye.

It was a large, oversized, framed map of our part of the city, in the aftermath of the Mill River Flood. The year is 1874. The flood began when an upper reservoir broke, and a wave of water barreled down the Mill River, killing people and destroying mills and other buildings.

The Mill River flood is part of our neighborhood’s story (a few years ago, we established a plaque by the river, dedicated to those who died in the flood). Believe it or not, we still find shards of pottery and old glass in the river from the remains of the flood. The map was intriguing because it was published in Harper’s Weekly magazine, apparently, and it shows the old railroad lines and mills.

We didn’t win the poster in the raffle, darn it, but my wife and I found out who can get us a copy.

Peace (history, present, future tense),
Kevin

PS — when my youngest son was 8, he made this video about our Leeds community. It was a project that he wanted to do, and we loved seeing his view of the neighborhood from his eyes.

Last week’s (or was it two week’s ago?) theme in the Networked Narratives was “writing with sound,” and participants were asked to record “found sounds” and then upload them for sharing, ideally at the Young Writers Project site. I had uploaded sounds of my guitar and guitar pick, my dog’s tail wagging and pouring coffee. The second task was to try to use other’s sound to create something new.

I used shared sounds from four different NetNarr folks: Geoff (voice, as he was tapping trees for sap), Rissa (walking), Masooch (tea and waffles) and Stryii (train station). Thank you, all. The piano part I added myself, just to give a little something melodic under it all.

I mixed it all in Soundtrap, an online music recording platform.

It is a cohesive story? It is not. Not really. But I love how Geoff’s voice clip starts it, and then the walking among people leads to something cooking in the kitchen, and then the walking away from it all. So it works more as a collection of sounds than a solid story.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

Duke heard it before I did. He stopped, frozen in motion. One paw was literally off the ground, and his head turned, sharp. The bristles on his back went up.

So I stopped, too, even though our early morning walk is often something I just want to get done with during the winter months. But he would not budge.

And then I heard it, too.

The high-pitched yelps of a single coyote off in the distance, followed by the cacophonous chorus of other coyotes joining in. Then, silence, before the single coyote began calling out again.

Duke was freaked out.

We’ve heard the coyotes before, in our early morning walks, and I knew they were outside the suburban neighborhood where we live. Likely, they were down by the river, where the woods brush up against people. The coyotes have been back for years now, as the regular signs on telephone poles asking if we’ve seen missing cats can testify. When people and nature butt heads, it is often the domesticated pets that pay the price.

“Come on. It’s OK. Let’s keep moving,” I whispered to Duke, and gently pulled on his leash. He turned, on my command and coaxing, rather reluctantly, and then kept on walking, a bit closer to by my side than usual. His head kept swiveling now and then, listening and wondering, and worrying.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

Maybe it is due to following Doodleaday this month, but I found myself noodling around during a meeting yesterday. Some people can listen more intently as they draw, but I don’t think that is always the case for me. I am better off taking written notes. Oh well.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

A few weeks ago (wait .. that was Day Two), I sliced out how my yet-unnamed rock and roll band is searching for a new singer, and how we found someone we hoped might fit. Well, three weeks later — after three cancelled practices due to family conflicts, and then sickness among musicians, and then Blizzard Aftermath — we finally got to play some music again last night. It was good to pull out the saxophone and just jam for a few hours.

The singer, whom we invited for a second try-out, called in sick, but we decided that he probably was not the right fit for our band, due to style. He’s a full-out rocker — think Bad Company and Aerosmith — while we are more nuanced groove — think Otis Redding and Motown, with some ZZ Top thrown in. He was hinting in emails to us his own reservations about the fit.

So, we move back to Square One in our search for a singer. As I said when I first wrote about this, it’s not easy to find the right fit for a band, to find a person you can get along with and make great music with over the long haul.

We play covers and originals, and handing over a song you wrote to be sung by someone else you barely know is a fragile thing, one built on trust and collaboration. Things have to click if it is going to work. I’m not sure we completely clicked with the last singer. I think he wanted a band to back him up, not to be part of a band itself, if that makes sense.

We’re frustrated by how long it has taken us but determined to make it right, and get out there, gigging again. Until then, we’ll keep looking and keep on making music.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

“Are his lips even moving?” my wife asked.

I adjusted my glasses, squinted a bit. The stage was in the distance, packed with about 80 high school juniors.

“I don’t think so,” I replied, as the chorus of voices on the stage recited the pledge for the National Honor Society during last night’s dedication ceremony for incoming honor society members. Our son is one of those on the stage.

Years ago, our older son was in the middle school chorus, rather reluctantly but we worried about him spending idle time in the Study Hall period. During concerts, he would not sing. He would just stand there, sometimes moving his lips. Never singing. Not even humming. Just … there. We laugh about it, as a family.

Now it was our middle son who had his own lips locked on stage, even as everyone around him was pledging to uphold good citizenship, academic performance and honesty.

He had somewhat been reluctant to agree to be accepted into the Honor Society (students are nominated by teachers), although he is solid student and fine athlete, and he does help others in the community. He has a big heart. We, his parents, shallowly like that being in the National Honor Society doesn’t hurt for his college applications and, not so shallowly, that it will provide more ways for him to do community service over the next year.

Later, he admitted to us that he didn’t say the pledge. He told us this with a grin on his face.

“I knew it!” my wife said, tapping him on the chest. He’s about a foot taller than she is.

“It’s kind of a cult,” he responded, and his best friend, who was also on stage with him, nodded in agreement. “Sort of cultish. Lighting candles and all that.”

What he meant is the strange vibe of geeky academic kids pledging in one voice to uphold rules and regulations in a sort of robotic recitation. The past members light four candles in honor of the “four pillars” of the society.

On one hand, I was proud of him for his individual spirit and sense of resistance. He’s going to need it in the Trump years ahead. On the other hand … come on, kid. It’s the National Honor Society! They do good in the world.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I would love to have a larger database of terms to use with a Twitter bot that I created for Networked Narratives, and I am hoping you might have some words to feed into the bot. The creation of a Twitter Bot was an offshoot of an earlier activity, in which I taught myself how to do it. (A Twitter Bot is an account that has certain random settings and posts either on a schedule, or when it is invoked by other Twitter users. You can read more about how I set mine up here)

My PeaceLove Bot is set up rather simply: it tweets with the message What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and ______. The blank space is what gets filled by pulling from a database of terms. That’s where you can come in and help me. I want to expand the database of terms.

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write all through March, every day, about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

This one will be a bit difficult to explain to an outside audience, but as part of the Networked Narratives course (I am an open participant, which means I can come and go as I choose – the course is about digital storytelling – there are folks in a real Graduate Level course at Kean University, too), there has been hints of secret codes, hidden within video frames and inside course messages. For a long time, weeks actually, I figured, I’ll let someone else crack the secret codes.

No one did.

And then, this sort of gently taunting tweet came along the other day from two mysterious recurring Twittery characters (who are part of the larger story of the course being “hacked” by outsiders), and I decided, OK, time to get cracking.

I had to stop and start the online video Youtube conversation with instructors Mia Zamora and Alan Levine a number of times, and use a screenshot grab to get the secret code embedded in the video. I stared at it for a long time, and then began to see a pattern, and worked from there.

This was the code:

The result? Well, I made this audio version of the message (which, again, will sound strange out of context of the NetNarr community, but which indicates the start of a push towards the second half of the course, which I think is about world-building and civic imagination.)

I tackled this simple code by hand, determining it was based on an alphabetic shift of letters, but later realized there are plenty of online sites that will do it for you, too. Still, I was glad my initial foray was on paper. There was a certain level of satisfaction that I did not require technology to crack the code.

Now, there are all sorts of other strange codes coming into the NetNarr stream, too, with numbers and letters and I have no idea how to even begin to figure those out … any ideas?